Joy Faith Knapp

August 25, 2000

Joy Faith Knapp, 37, a North Side resident who won awards for distinguished sales and marketing for her work in the paint industry and who had lived with lupus nephritis since 1981, died in Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Sunday, Aug. 20, of complications from her illness. "I was very fortunate to have her for 37 years," her father, Jules Knapp, said. "She always had a smile on her face, no matter how ill she was. She was a great inspiration to me, to her family, to our company and to the people who met her." Ms. Knapp graduated from Highland Park High School in 1981. She went to the University of Iowa but returned home when she became ill. Upon her return, she joined her father in his paint business, United Coatings Inc. She learned all aspects of the business, landed large accounts and then concentrated on marketing and label design for customers, her father said. "I used to kid her and say, `You used to be a CEO in another [life],'" her father said. "She came up with thoughts and ideas all the time. At times it used to frighten me that she would be able to solve the problems we had." When the business merged and became Pratt & Lambert United, Ms. Knapp, at age 31, became one of the youngest directors of a New York Stock Exchange-listed company, her father said. Also known for her generosity, Ms. Knapp donated money to churches and temples and once bought a car for a deaf acquaintance who was having difficulty getting to work, her father said. Her illness spurred her parents' generosity. In 1991, Jules and Gwen Knapp donated $10 million to the University of Chicago to fund the Gwen Knapp Center for Lupus and Immunology Research, which is housed in the Jules F. Knapp Medical Research Building. The building opened in June 1994. Besides her parents, Ms. Knapp is survived by two sisters: Elyse Sollender and Susan Schulman. Services were held Tuesday.